The Winter Concerto is a collection of stories where the spirit plays a key role in the world. They cover a wide range of topics from the composition of Shostakovich's Second Piano Concerto (with its haunting second movement and the clock chiming at the end of the movement) to Charles Trenet's 1947 hit, "La Mer," to the true story of a type of pottery produced in Japan during the Middle Ages to the death of Jean Jacques Rousseau and the role of an effigist in religious iconography.